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October 16, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Vajpayee is right, but... Mayhem in markets |
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INDO-RUSSIAN RELATIONS Pakistan’s geopolitical debt equations
India-centric policy
‘isolating’ Pak
Morality of open and closed society
Cities of tomorrow — will they be safe for the citizen?
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Vajpayee is right, but... PRIME
MINISTER ATAL BEHARI VAJPAYEE has been both hasty and indiscreet in claiming that “our governance has been free from corruption” for the past one year the BJP-led NDA government has been in office. One can vouch for the credibility and credentials of the Prime Minister and some of his colleagues. But the system of governance in this country, as we have known it for the past four decades or so, has been like a vast aquarium in which no one can be sure whether the ministerial and official “fish” are drinking “water” or not. Most skeletons in ministerial cupboards tumble out once power is lost. Therefore, the verdict on this aspect of Mr Vajpayee’s government has to be left for the future. After all, he has had to manage various alliance partners which in itself is not an easy task. To say this is not to ignore some landmark achievements of the Prime Minister. He has ensured a degree of stability in the coalition system by his tact, patience and skill. It is also a fact that he has added to the country’s prestige overseas. His successful visit to the USA and the subsequent meeting with the Russian President and his team in New Delhi have been quite satisfying in the country’s long-term interest. The sore point in foreign relations, of course, continues to be Pakistan and its military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf. The handling of Pakistan affairs by South Block has been both faulty and clumsy. It has lacked the maturity expected from a big power like India. Linked with this is the question of Kashmir. Notwithstanding the latest claim of an “improved situation” in the valley and beyond, the government’s performance on the Kashmir front has been far from satisfactory. It has either repeated the old mistakes or has bragged too much instead of showing results on the ground. In this context whether the Kargil operation was a success or not depends on how one looks at the whole episode. With foresight, right approach and timely action, this traumatic experience could have been avoided. Perhaps, that was too much to expect from a government never sure of how it should tackle the Kashmir issue and deal with its hostile neighbour. Two wrongs do not make a right. As the nation wishes Mr Vajpayee speedy recovery after his successful knee surgery, it is time he objectively drew a balance-sheet of his government’s failures and successes. Rhetoric is one thing. Mr Vajpayee has done that. The nation’s real progress will now depend on how it redraws policies, programmes and priorities. As the NDA government moves on to the second year, there is nothing much to gloat over. It is also futile to ask people to face economic challenges collectively. First of all, the government has to show that it means business and has the requisite political will to put the economy on the right track. Hard decisions have to come from the establishment. And these decisions will have to be evolved after due consultation with leaders of the alliance partners. We have often seen that the government’s right hand does not know what the left hand is up to. Even the process of consultation has serious gaps. The rollback syndrome can hardly be expected to add to the credibility of the Vajpayee government. It is, therefore, better to discuss issues objectively, arrive at a consensus and then make public pronouncements. Otherwise, the whole exercise becomes ridiculous. In fact, the government needs to have a fresh look at the various aspects of economic reforms and liberalisation. It should audit its performance, compare it with China and see where India stands. Facts speak for themselves. If there is a big gap between promise and performance, the authorities should be seriously concerned about the results. Equally critical are the grassroots realities. Economic reforms cannot be seen in isolation. They have to be realistically matched with the ground realities existing in different socio-economic segments. The Prime Minister says that “the haves must bear a greater share of the burden than the havenots in the transition period”. He is very right. All that one would like to ask is whether Mr Vajpayee sees his own government in the category of “the haves” or the “havenots”. If it falls in the haves category, then he should show determination and willingness to bear a greater share of the burden by cutting down unproductive expenses and exercising greater austerity in running the affairs of the State. We should not expect the people to sacrifice if the government’s politico-administrative system lives beyond its means and conducts itself like the neo-rich class instead of identifying itself with the havenots of Indian society. |
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Mayhem in markets IT was globalisation with a vengeance. Stock markets the world over trembled on Friday reacting to the plunge of both Dow Jones (10 per cent) and Nasdaq (17 per cent) indices the previous
day. Added to that was the civil war-like situation in West Asia and a predictable jump in crude price. In India, additionally, there was bad news for the economy with the RBI lowering its projected growth rate. A nervous BSE shed 108 points, on the top of nearly 200 and 106 on the two previous days. In fact, since September the sensex has dropped nearly 900 points or 19 per cent to hit a low of 3378 points. But analysts are hopeful that the market may have bottomed out and this week there will be some cheer. Nasdaq has bounced back by a hefty 241 points or about 8 per cent on Friday. There are hectic moves to defuse the tension caused by street fighting between Palestinians and the Israeli army and police. Oil prices are ruling steady though high. All these factors should calm the market. Along with this the rupee too can be expected to hover around 46.35 to a dollar and settle down. In this country the difference between the average movement of the sensex and prices is growing wider and the correction has to come from a rise in share prices. At the current rates Indian stock is very attractive and the speculators that foreign fund managers are will feel encouraged to invest in it. It is a different matter that during the past few weeks they have turned net sellers, adding to the depressed mood among traders. Unlike in the technology driven Nasdaq, in India IT stocks have not done badly although the two giants, Infosys and Satyam, which doubled their profits in the second quarter, failed to ignite buyer interest. The long term prospect is not very bright what with both agriculture and industry slowing down and the higher crude price threatening to stoke inflation. Traders in the stock market are actually speculators and revel in volatility since wild price fluctuations promise quick profit. Only mutual funds are genuine investors since they see no other avenue to safely park their capital. They made a killing last year when the sensex rose smartly. They lost a packet now accurately reflecting the widespread havoc in recent months. |
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INDO-RUSSIAN RELATIONS MR VLADIMIR PUTIN, President of the Russian Federation came, saw and conquered, at least partially. His visit as well as all his recent actions have demonstrated Russia’s determined bid to a more independent and assertive role in the Asia-Pacific region and the long-term Indo-Russian complementarity of interests. Russia under Mr Putin is striving to carve out a larger political space for itself. It has become convinced that while eschewing hostility and malice, in its own security and political interest it must reach out for friends who could together provide some more balance to a world dominated by a cluster of nations within the Western hemisphere. On similar considerations, and in its own political and defence interests, India has responded warmly to Russian
initiatives and gestures. The Russian people have gone through a traumatic experience which has yet to end: the almost precipitous decline in living standards, the fall in production, the amazing rise in unemployment and dwindling incomes and the equally amazing levels of corruption, the decline in central authority, the spectre of the mafia, the increasing disparities and so on. The worst is perhaps not yet over, but at least now there is a semblance of order and some re-establishment of central authority. The wheels of production have started moving although even the previous levels have not been achieved. At least foreign policy has assumed some recognisable shape, and Russia has begun to assert itself in a somewhat more determined manner with better coherence and purposefulness. Both Moscow and New Delhi are discovering that geopolitical realities do not vanish even in the face of strong winds of change. Initially, influential sections of the Russians holding important positions of authority looked up to the USA for succour and salvation. Their sights were fixed on Washington. But gradually an awareness was spreading in Russia that the country had to find its own answers, that the world was a far more complicated place and that the geopolitical realities were stubborn factors in international relations. Considering the fact that Russia was a Eurasian power, considering the situation in Eastern and Western Europe, and considering also the rise of the Asia-Pacific region (in its broadest scope) in the economic-political system, Russia sought a better equilibrium, first of all in forging a new relationship with China and India. And with both it was successful upto a point, much more with India than with China. A slew of critical developments have had a cataclystic impact on Russian perceptions: the events involving Yugoslavia and Kosovo, the bypassing of the United Nations, the expansive assertiveness of NATO, the so-called nuclear defence shield the USA is seeking to develop, the spread of religious fanaticism and terrorism impacting on Russia too (the same terrorist forces working from Kashmir to Chechnya, as Mr Putin put it), the Kargil war — all these and allied happenings have played their role in bringing them together. Their views have converged on major international issues. This convergence has subsumed even the different approaches to the nuclear issue. Russia joined the other nuclear powers in condemning the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests. Moscow wants India to sign the CTBT and to join the non-proliferation regime. But there is a qualitative difference between the Russian standpoint and that of the USA and the rest of the West. Russia has imposed no sanctions on India, nor has it put pressure for rolling back the nuclear capability. In fact, the most important agreements between Russia and India have been signed after India’s nuclear tests. The agreement on cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy signed during Mr Putin’s visit has laid the ghost of any Russian opposition to the nuclear tests. Russia has again emerged as the largest supplier of India’s defence needs. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the rate of dependence on Russian spares was 40 per cent for the Army, 60 per cent for the Air Force and 80 per cent for the Navy. India made a series of efforts to diversify the sources of supply of military hardware, but discovered that Russia still was the most reliable and less expensive supplier of India’s urgent needs. The defence ties constitute among the most crucial aspects of Indo-Russian relationship. Russia had offered in 1997 a $10 billion arms deal extending into the new millennium and India has now contracted a $ 3 billion deal to purchase 310 T-90 tanks and 140 Sukhoi-30 MKI multi-role fighters and a subsequent purchase of aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. What is significant is that the technology for their manufacture in India would also be transferred. It may also be noted that even China has so far been supplied only SU-27s. There is one weak link, however, in Indo-Russian relations — the economic link. For many years after the demise of the Soviet Union, there had been chaotic conditions in production, forced decentralisation and collapse of the earstwhile decision making apparatus. Consequently, Indo-Russian trade and economic relations suffered disastrously and the two countries had to grapple with the need for a new adjustment. India and Russia have also struggled with the huge debt that New Delhi had accumulated — some $ 7 billion — during the Soviet period. As long as the trade was in rupee-rouble terms, the problem was manageable. But the collapse of the Soviet Union changed the picture and a free-falling rouble compounded the problems. Trade between the two countries remains sluggish. It picked up in 1994-96 to some Rs 6000 crore but came on the downward slide in the ensuing years to a little over Rs 5000 crore in 1998-99. Something vital will be missing in their ties if economic relationship was not deepened. However, a note of caution needs to be introduced to obtain a correct understanding of the substance of this relationship. It should be clear that there are certain vital differences between the Indo-Russian relationship and the Indo-Soviet ties of the past. Russia is not heading nor is it a party to any military-ideological bloc. There is no world-wide struggle of the Cold-War period type going on. Except for NATO, there is no world-wide military alliance. Today the economic struggle is as crucial as political struggle. All countries have to engage themselves in the race for economic development. Produce or perish is much truer at present than ever before. This requires involvement and cooperation rather than confrontation in the international arena. Russia is equally engaged in this struggle. Therefore, any confrontation with the USA or other Western powers is out of the question. Moreover, Russia is passing through a painful period of transition. Despite its vast and potential military strength, it is struggling to modernise its economy, the political structure, even its armed forces and the military production apparatus. It is also grappling with other social problems. Russia is associated with G-8, but lacks the economic clout of the others. There are signs that it may be turning the corner, but so much remains to be done. The Indo-Russian “strategic partnership” cannot be directed against other countries. It is designed to moderate the rigours of any dominance in this region, to promote a better political and economic balance, to create a healthier atmosphere for cooperation and to push for peaceful but somewhat more equal role for various countries. The world has changed. This is the era of cooperation — economic as well as political. This is the challenge the Indo-Russian relations have to respond to. The writer is former Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University. |
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Pakistan’s geopolitical debt equations NUCLEAR brinkmanship, a war, a coup d’etat, and a global confrontation over the sanctity of Eurobonds: few sovereign debt restructurings match the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s for eventfulness. Between May, 1998, and November, 1999, Standard & Poor’s credit ratings on Pakistan’s old, now-retired Eurobonds were downgraded seven notches, to “D” from “B+”, before being withdrawn. In December, 1999, a new $623 million Eurobonds — issued as part of a pathbreaking exchange offer since emulated by the Ukraine, Russia, and Ecuador — was assigned a “B-” rating. Today, Pakistan’s debt restructuring stands poised for a second iteration. Consequently, Standard & Poor’s sovereign credit ratings on Pakistan are again under heightened surveillance. Although Pakistan’s debt negotiations have been replete with technical nuances, the ultimate drivers of the process have been geopolitical. Since Pakistan’s May, 1998, nuclear tests, the G-7, led by the USA has sought to use “carrot-and-stick” financial tactics to encourage Pakistan to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, cooperate with various global anti-terrorism initiatives, and restrain its acrimonious posturing vis-a-vis India. The effectiveness of US policy rests upon carefully calibrated levels and durations of financial pressure, severe enough to maximise political leverage over Pakistan but measured enough to avoid triggering adverse regime changes. The Pakistani administration, however, has learnt a tactic of its own: sovereign default and its prioritisation. In mid-July, 1998, six weeks after the imposition of sanctions, Pakistan put in place a unilateral freeze on the servicing of its bilateral debt and commercial bank loans. The moratorium reflected a fundamental notion: that the marginal utility of full and timely debt servicing is positive if, and only if, the net present value of the expected future disbursements exceeds that of the scheduled debt-service obligations. In Pakistan’s case, the prospect of prolonged economic sanctions tilted the logic in favour of default — excluding default on multilateral debt and Eurobonds, both of which, in the Pakistani perception, constituted important enough future financing avenues to warrant seniority of treatment. Throughout late 1998 while Pakistan accumulated debt-service arrears, US concerns regarding the stability of the Nawaz Sharif administration mounted. This concern triggered the release of $575 million of IMF funds to Pakistan on January 14, 1999, followed a fortnight later by a Paris Club framework agreement that not only regularised about $550 million in bilateral debt-service arrears, but also provided for the rescheduling of an additional $2.8 billion of bilateral debt service due in the period to end-2000. In an additional twist, for the first time ever, the Paris Club extended its private-creditor “burdensharing” clause to cover international bond debt, a stipulation that forced Pakistan into eventual Eurobonds default and created a global controversy ahead of Russia’s much larger Paris and London Club negotiations. On the geopolitical level, the January, 1999, intervention came too late for the Sharif administration. With its power sapped by Pakistan’s military establishment, the Sharif government had already acquiesced to an armyorchestrated incursion into India-controlled Kashmir, an act of brinkmanship that led to a limited war in mid-1999 and triggered a chain of events that culminated in a coup on October 12, 1999. One month after seizing power, Gen Pervez Musharraf, self-styled Chief Executive of Pakistan, launched a Eurobonds exchange offer that had been planned half a year earlier. Aided in part by the credible threat of payment default that the new military leadership was able to project, the exchange was a success: well over 90 per cent of bondholders participated. That, and the signing on December 12, 1999, of an agreement regularising about $1 billion of foreign currency loan arrears to commercial banks, brought to an end Pakistan’s first cycle of sovereign defaults. General Musharraf’s coup catalysed a reassessment of the USA’s Pakistan policy. IFM programmes remained in abeyance, as did major World Bank loans (Pakistan has made net repayments to the major multilaterals since the coup). During his March, 2000, stopover in Islamabad, President Clinton signalled increasing US impatience with the military leadership, and called for a deescalation of Pakistan-backed violence in India (Kashmir), in thinly veiled language. IMF-World Bank support was made contingent upon good foreign-policy conduct. But, as events have proved US political leverage over any Pakistani regime is fundamentally limited. Analysed thus, Standard & Poor’s concludes that perhaps the only way in which the USA could salvage some of its influence over Pakistan would be by brokering a new, back-loaded disbursement package accompanied by another round of rule-based rescheduling. Such an approach could, by creating appropriate incentives, avert unilateral debt-service moratoria and allow the USA to enforce a degree of implicit foreign-policy conditionality. In the event of a second rescheduling of bilateral interest and principal, a rigorous interpretation of the Paris Club’s “comparability of treatment” principle would imply that Pakistan’s new Eurobonds would have to undergo a second coercive restructuring. Under such a scenario, Standard & Poor’s rating on Pakistan’s exchange-offer Eurobonds (due 2005) would come under precipitous downward pressure. The author is an Associate Director in Standard & Poor’s Sovereign Ratings Group, and has been a primary analyst for Pakistan since May, 1998. |
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India-centric policy ‘isolating’ Pak A Pakistani weekly has sharply criticised the foreign policy of the military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, saying that it remains “negative matrix of India” and has led to Islamabad’s international isolation. Pakistani weekly “The Friday Times”, while commenting on one year of General Musharraf’s rule, said “Our foreign policies remain anchored in the
negative matrix of India alone rather than reflecting the positive global outreach of the fifth most populous country in the world.” The
weekly said an India-centric foreign policy has led Pakistan “into the arms of destabilising regional jehads, an arms race we cannot afford.” The weekly said the foreign policy had also led Pakistan into an international isolation which “renders us incapable of finding the breathing space to restructure our debt-ridden economy.” The paper said other impacts of such a policy was an erosion of civil society and human rights and democratic norms at the hands of sectarian element and fundamentalists. It said General Musharraf, flexing his military might, had been able to increase government revenues but “it would be good if he were to steer a path that realigns Pakistan’s economy with the prosperous countries of the world”. “Will he (General Musharraf) heed the call of national history or succumb to the lure of parochial power,” the editorial asked and commented “as long as he dithers, he will wear a crown of thorns.” The Friday Times commented that for doing this General Musharraf would have to become a statesman like leader of the Pakistani nation. The weekly said the continuing foreign policy’s blowback effect was leading to rapid degeneration of the state and the civil society. It said Pakistan was beset with two more fundamental strategic issues. “First, neither Westminster democracy nor military rule seems to work for us.” In the short-term this may be the fault of the democrats who have a tendency of slipping into dictatorship, but in longer term context, democracy seems to have been continuously interrupted or derailed by the shenanigans of the military so that it has not had a decent chance to rectify its shortcomings as a viable political system. On the economic front, the weekly said the continuing gap between government revenues and expenditure and the gap in the balance of trade resulting from an excess of imports over exports is making Pakistan continuously dependent on international financial institutions. The paper said it is also bad economics to pin hopes of plugging the historical trade gap by restricting industrial imports and increasing primary commodity exports. — PTI |
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Morality of open and closed society “(T)HEY tried to purchase the right to remain in power and rule the country,” Delhi Special judge Ajit Bharihoke wrote last Friday on October 12, sentencing former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Mr Buta Singh to three years imprisonment in the JMM case. Of the entire public discourse — legal, moral and political — that the JMM case has spawned since it first came to light in 1996, that is about the plainest and profoundest statement ever made regarding the nature of the crime committed, a statement that history may never perhaps improve upon. It is also the best answer to all those doubting Thomases, from the Congress’s new-found economic genius Jairam Ramesh to editor Shekhar Gupta of The Indian Express, whose hearts bleed for the former Chanakya of Indian politics come to legal grief. “Here is one of the most erudite and scholarly of Prime Ministers in the world found guilty of ‘fixing’ a no-confidence motion in Parliament. Here is an unusually multi-lingual Prime Minister who changed our mindset on economic and foreign policy being subjected to public ridicule.” That is Jairam Ramesh in India Today (the October 16 issue) under the title “Rao doesn’t deserve this”. And Shekhar Gupta, writing on October 14, says practically the same thing though under a more impressive, almost lyrical, heading: “The Old Fox and the grapes of wrath: Alone in the crowd”. “(N)o other Indian Prime Minister, except Nehru, could have packed so much insight, so much intellect, in a 30-minute discourse on so complex a problem,” writes Shekhar, recounting a one-to-one chat with Rao on Najibullah’s Afghanistan in 1991. Discounting any intention to question Rao’s conviction (why else then did he write the piece at all?) or to raise questions on whether he deserves to go to jail or not (which obviously according to Shekhar Gupta he does not), he holds forth nonetheless on this “very fascinating situation of a man who achieved so much for the nation in five impossible years being so friendless on his way to jail...” The courts (he continues) will hold Rao accountable for any sins he may have committed in terms of the law but “at a larger level, Rao is being punished by the entire Indian middle class for keeping the BJP out of power for a full five years. Why else would it hate someone who gave them so much, through economic reform?” How intellectual attainment, so rare amongst India’s politicians, can be a good excuse for corruption, so endemic to all of them (as to be almost a birth mark), fails me altogether. But even more than that, it is both incredible and dangerous to suggest that the opening up of the economy or economic reform can ever extend to purchasing the right to remain in power and rule the country. Such unabashed plutocracy would be a total corruption of the Constitution, if not a total negation of it. The idea that economic upgradation can co-exist with moral degradation goes back, in fact, to politically closed societies, those very societies the nostrum of opening up of the economy is supposed to be a statement of revolt against. Those who would purchase the right to rule the country rather than bow out of office in deference to public opinion, would not, if the necessity so arose, hesitate to use more forcible means to remain in power. Between bribing unfriendly MPs to remain in power, and clamping them in jail to the same end, is a substantial modal difference no doubt but a thin conceptual divide. Honest dictators are no less rare than honest politicians and economic “development is indeed a momentous engagement with freedom’s possibilities,” to quote Amartya Sen. But let us leave the philosophy of law where it best belongs — the universe of debate, declamation and speculation — and come down to the nitty-gritty of Judge Bharihoke’s verdict last week. And make a technical and purely legal point. A point which does not appear to have been made by anyone else, for or against Narasimha Rao, but which has a bearing (this time) on judicial rectitude. How could the Judge, hearing and passing sentence (under Section 235, CrPC), have, apart from passing the sentence itself, gone beyond the judgement of conviction previously delivered on September 29 and directed registration of a fresh CBI case against some of the other accused who happen to be the bribe-takers? How could the Judge have, in the guise of passing sentence on Mr Rao, added to his judgement of September 29? Under no provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure, or any other Indian law, can a hearing on the question of sentence be used by the Judge to add to or modify what he has already said on the merits of the case. Such a power, if conceded, is susceptible of great abuse. That Judge Bharihoke did so in the larger public interest is beside the point. And that he did so, as I believe he did, “under pressure” of public opinion as reflected in media reactions to his September 29 verdict, mystified by the non-prosecution of the bribe-takers, is not comforting either. From the trial courts to the Supreme Court, judges who deliver judgements with an eye on newspapers have much to account for. |
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Cities of tomorrow — will they be safe for the citizen? ON October 16 starts off here an Indo-EU Meet on Sustainable Urban Development — ‘Cities Of Tomorrow’. The list of participating members is long and impressive. The European Union Member State missions in New Delhi will be led by the Embassy of France (current Presidency of the EU) and leading architects and experts are coming from the various Europeon countries. From the Indian side there will be representatives from NDMC, INTACH, SPA. And as expected the thrust will be on “housing, urbanization,infrastructure, urban governance, heritage management.” No, there is no mention whether there will be any section dealing with the safety aspect — how safe will be the cities of today or that of tomorrow for us, the hapless citizens of this country. I am purposely bringing in this aspect as just two days back the Capital witnessed the most brutal murder of this year (unless, of course, some more equally devastating murders are lined up) — a 26-year-old factory owner was beaten to death, in front of his four-year-old son, by four policemen because the man had the courage to criticise their high handedness. Actually killed by those men in uniform in broad daylight in Delhi’s North-East Seelampuri area! What do we say to that? The system is actually failing and together with that we are crumbling. Ministers and their hand-in-glove partners, the civil servants, can cry hoarse that they are doing their bit but when law abiding citizens are killed by cops then it is high time that we, the surviving ones, speak out. Cities can stand intact and well planned and spruced up (for the movement of those VVIP limbs, that is ) but if the citizens are not safe then the entire exercise seems such an eyewash. Focus on West Asia THURSDAY evening was rather strange. In the sense, though we were sitting and eating at the ongoing Shanghai food festival (hosted by the Ashoka hotel) but as talks revolved around the ongoing disaster in West Asia a sense of unease and gloom prevailed. Seated on the same table were the ambassadors of Lebanon, Libya and Jordan and we discussed the implications of the war-like situation and Israel’s blatant use of arms against the Palestinian demonstrators. Though these diplomats sounded hopeful that a full fledged war wouldn’t break out in the region but, then, on the other hand, they seemed doubtful whether lasting peace would emerge. As though a lull or a temporary halt to the ongoing attacks on the Palestinians could be achieved. As of now the Palestinians are being driven to the wall and even beyond, that too in their erstwhile homeland. And in this atmosphere, where even missiles have been launched, the mood is that of anger and pain. So much so that the Council of Arab Permanent members of the League of Arab States has requested a special session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights “to discuss the recent violence in the occupied territories and Israel..” And India’s stand vis-a-vis this crisis would perhaps get clearer, once Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh visits Saudi Arabia, this week. I am sure he’ll have to put his best (diplomatic) foot forward and answer some specific queries vis a vis India’s stand. Tara Punjabi’s talent hunt Met Tara Punjabi’s CEO, Kishwar Ahluwalia, at Pavan K. Varma and Renuka Khandekar’s book release function. To the obvious query whether this channel was picking up (via-a-vis viewers, if not revenues) Kishwar came up with some refreshing inputs “There’s no much of talent in the region .... And, mind you, we are not limiting ourselves to just bhangras or giddas but moving far beyond those spheres — to the arts, history, literary works, writers, artists etc.... Earlier we had launched an anchor hunt and one was surprised to see so many talented youngsters and two of our new anchors — Satinder and Nishant — are our find. And now we have launched another talent hunt, this time for singers and once again the response has been tremendous -auditioning is on October 17, the finals will be held in Ludhiana on October 19, at Guru Nanak Bhavan...” To the criticism that Tara Punjabi’s headquarters should have been in Chandigarh she says: “When we started there were no infrastructural facilities available in Chandigarh but now with those facilities coming up (studio space etc) we would be shifting in another three to four months time.” Over with the knee operation details let’s focus on two diabetic patients —P. V. Narasimha Rao and K.N. Govindacharya are both highly diabetic. And now with tension on their heads — Rao because of the verdict and Govindacharya because of Uma Bharati’s controversial interview — there are chances that their blood sugar levels could be going high, for this order is definitely and directly linked to stress and upheavals. |
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Spiritual Nuggets If you can take What comes to you Through Him, Then whatever it is Becomes divine in itself; Shame becomes honour, Bitterness becomes sweet And gross darkness Becomes clear light.
— Maharaj Charan Singh, Words Eternal. *** Here come, human beings are deluded by the world, wearing the guise of a deceiver, Sir. For ever are not youth, pleasures and parents, nor for ever stays childhood, Sir. For ever are not treasures, elephants and horses, nor for ever kings, kingdoms possessed, Sir. Shah Muhammad, for ever in the world is not beauty, nor for ever stays the hair black, Sir. —Qissa Larai Singha *** Born of forms, rooted in forms Feeding on forms, ever changing its forms Itself formless, this ego-ghost Takes to its heels on enquiry. On the rising of the ego everything rises With its subsidence all subside The ego is therefore all Tracking it is the way to victory over everything. The ‘I’ does not rise in the real state, Search for the source of ‘I’ dissolves it, How else can one attain the supreme state of one’s own self? Discover the real source of the ego, By exploring within, with keen intellect, By regulating breath, speech and mind As one would do to recover a thing which has Fallen into a deep well. —Sri Ramana Maharishi, 25-28. *** The ego is like a cloud. The sun cannot be seen on account of a thin patch of cloud; when that disappears one sees the sun. If by the grace of the guru one’s ego vanishes, then one sees god. —The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, chapter VII *** Human life must be some kind of mistake. — Schopenhauer, Vanity of Existence *** A man is God in ruin. — Ralph W. Emerson, Nature, VIII |
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